


Procedure of Pain

by Anonymous



Series: boys of the raven variety (my TRC fics) [5]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Confessions, Drabble, M/M, Possibly Unrequited Love, adam being like ‘muh unknowability’
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26457511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Gansey can’t get it out. Adam can’t get out of himself. It’s the usual mess.(Indeterminate timeline— probably before TRB)
Relationships: Richard Gansey III/Adam Parrish
Series: boys of the raven variety (my TRC fics) [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827523
Kudos: 20
Collections: Fanfic Anonymous





	Procedure of Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Found this in my drafts. It was originally supposed to be part of my fic ‘Famous Prophets’. For some reason or another, it wasn’t. Who knows why—past me is an inscrutable and mysterious thing. Go read that fic. It’s pretty good, I think. Longer than this, that’s for sure.

“I really do like you, Adam. You know that?” 

Adam watches the valley fields roll past in the cranked-down Camaro window, avoiding the reflection of Gansey’s eyes in the side-mirror. He doesn’t respond. What in the world does he say to that? 

“I really-.” Gansey begins, and stops jolting mid-sentence. This makes Adam turn a little in spite of himself. The wind floats dreamily over that cinematic little tuft of hair grazing the other boy’s forehead. He looks like an album cover. 

“I l-“ he begins and stops again. His eyes are on the road with an insistency that nearly verges back into carelessness— the white of his eyes pointing towards the white-lines like the needle in a compass. 

_ White, white, white_ ; Gansey’s knuckles bloom with it against the wheel of The Pig. 

It’s strange, unfamilar, this shade of Gansey— he seems constipated, unsure. It’s a far cry from the sort of kingly figure Adam knows he can be. 

_ If anyone can make Gansey unsure_ _,_ Adam thinks cynically,  _ it’s me. Join the club. I make me feel that way too.  _

Gansey lets out a few jarbled syllables that sound like words in  intention , but got mixed up along the way. Purpose, but no meaning. 

Gansey opens his mouth again, and finally turns to look at Adam, something somehow very distant and very, very closeshining in his eyes. He shakes his head minutely, and turns back to to the empty stretch of road ahead with a forceful set to his shoulders. Whatever he wants to say, it won’t come out. Adam feels that ever-present guilt drip in his gut, so familiar he can no longer distil the source. 

  
_ You’ve got to isolate the variables _ _,_ the studious compartment of his brain reminds helpfully. Adam wishes it were that easy—in real life, the variables are always such a messy, attached deal. 

“Gansey?” Adam asks, frowning softly. He can see the furrow between in his eyebrows reflected off the mirror in the periphery of his vision. 

“I like you a lot, Adam. I just don’t know why you’ve got to make it so difficult.” 

Gansey’s nails dig into the steering-wheel hard enough to leave divots in the leather. _He’s angry with himself,_ Adam realizes. Gansey and The Pig were just two more of those codependent variables, impossible to isolate. 

It’s a startling thought, that he knows his friend so well. It’s comforting, because Gansey will never understand Adam like he does him. It’s lonely, too. It’s the loneliest damned thing in the world. 

Adam lets out a deep breath through his teeth, letting it whistle indeterminatably with the whine of the moving wind. He feels immeasurably full and impossibly empty, like those wooden Matrioska dolls. Hollow and full. Knowing and unknowable. 

Gansey lets his nails scar the wheel as the road screams past their ears, hurting himself the only way he knows how. 

_How nice it must be, to only know one way._ Adam muses tiredly.  _ I could show you the whole iceberg.  _


End file.
